Finding Computers and
People on the Internet
Michael J. Stawasz
Computer Crime & IP Section
U.S. Department of Justice
Robert Fortner
Special Agent
U.S. Secret Service
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Before You Hit the Web
Search Engines
Investigating Websites
People and Business Finders
Real Estate Databases
Mapping Sites
Other Resources
Social Networking
Before You Hit the Web
When you visit a
website, you
reveal more than
you might think,
so think about
which website
you’re visiting.
Internet Traffic Overview
IP ADDRESS
149.101.1.120
Internet Traffic Overview
All Internet traffic has a Source
(Sender) and Destination (Receiver) IP
address
“give me
www.charity.org”
User
ISP
Welcome to
charity.org
Web Server
http://www.cual- es- mi- ip.net/
http://www.see- my- ip.com/
http://analyze.privacy.net/
• Internet Protocol (IP) Address
• Host name: XXX.h-68-49-11144.mclnva23.covad.net
• Date of last visit
• How many times you have visited
• Where you linked from
• Browser Type, Version & Plugins
• Operating System & Version
• Language Setting
• Date/time Setting
• And More…
What if the Information is In Another Language
Antes de llegar a la Web
Cuando usted
visita un sitio
web, que revelan
más de lo que
parece, así que
piense en qué
sitio web que
estás visitando.
www.google.com
www.yahoo.com
www.altavista.com
www.lycos.com
search.aol.com
www.alltheweb.com
www.bing.com
www.ask.com
www.a9.com
Facebook?
Plaxo?
Also an
artist?
LinkedIn
?
Things To Find: name, email, home address, phone number, websites
Investigating the Website
How do you find who owns a web site, e.g.,
allsoftwaredownload.com
Enter domain or IP address =
ownership and other information
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www.domaintools.com
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www.samspade.org
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lacnic.net
WHOIS: Domain
Organization,
contact information
Accuracy: selfreported; almost
any information can
be bogus
What Is Real?
At least one email
for administration
Name servers for
functionality
Keywords
Thumbnai
l
Server Data
Other Websites on this Server
The Web’s Historian: Archive.org
44 Copies of the Web Site
Each link leads to a
snapshot in time of
the website
Site on June 17, 2006
The snapshots are on www.archive.org
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you’re not visiting the target website directly
Careful: Links may lead to sites on the Internet
Archive.org materials have been successfully
introduced into U.S. courts
Websites that Link to a Site
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www.netcraft.com
Command line tool “wget” can follow all links and
save the files constituting a website:
wget -r http://www.allsoftwaredownload.com/ -o logfile
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Or you can use
Commercial
software
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Zabasearch – find a person including unlisted
numbers www.zabasearch.com
DocuSearch – searches many free databases
www.docusearch.com/free.html
Phone Company Finder – tells what company
issued a particular number www.fonefinder.net
Switchboard – find a person or business
www.switchboard.com
Reverse Phone Lookup –
www.reversephonedirectory.com
InfoSpace – phone/address directory
www.infospace.com
California
Addresses
Age
Phone
Information
Freshness
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We want to learn about the Killion St. Address.
First, we find the right database for the
geographical area using Google
Type
(Sales Price)
Map
Building
Info
(Owners)
Google Search History
Google Search History